Green Berets Recount Deadly Taliban Ambush

(CBS)  With all the focus on the war in Iraq, we don't hear much about the war in Afghanistan any more, even though the U.S. is fighting the Taliban nearly seven years after they seemed to be defeated.

And we hardly ever hear from the elite, secretive U.S. Special Forces who are leading that fight. But a Green Beret team wanted to talk to 60 Minutes to honor the men they lost when they were ambushed by hundreds of Taliban fighters two years ago.

Not since "Black Hawk Down" in Somalia have we heard a story of a small band of elite American soldiers who were so badly outnumbered and fighting for their lives.

This is a story about valor. But it's also a wake-up call about the growing strength of the enemy in Afghanistan.

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From behind enemy lines, a Taliban camera captured pictures of the fighting, which started at sundown on June 23, 2006.

"And it's like all hell breaks loose. Literally, all hell breaks loose," remembers Major Shef Ford. "The enemy is firing at all directions at us. And soldiers are trying to identify the positions and return fire. They had completely surrounded us and were firing at us with multiple systems."

The battle, over two days and two nights, took place in a small village about 12 miles southwest of the city of Kandahar. The Green Berets, just nine of them, went into the village with eight other American and 48 Afghan soldiers. They were on a mission to capture or kill a Taliban commander known to operate in the area.

Maj. Ford says he didn't know hundreds of well-armed, well-supplied hardcore Taliban were waiting to ambush his men. American forces were accustomed to quick hit and run attacks by the Taliban, but Ford and Sergeant Brendan O'Connor say they were shocked by the sustained, organized assault in the village.

"We had not seen this disciplined execution of infantry tactics," Sgt. O'Connor explains.

"And you had never experienced anything like this?" correspondent Lara Logan asks.

"Not to this extent," Ford says. "We also started taking mortar fire into the patrol base, which also demonstrated that there was somebody who knew about the weapons system and how to operate it."

"So that was a sign that this was going to be different?" Logan asks.

"Yes, that was a sign," Ford says.

At one point, the Taliban even broke through the Green Berets' perimeter, but were pushed back. Maj. Ford called in air support. But the bombs couldn't stop the Taliban - they were everywhere.

Using an unmanned aerial vehicle as their eyes in the sky, the Green Berets located a compound near the town graveyard that they suspected the Taliban were using as a command center.

Team Sergeant Thom Maholic led a small group of men from the Green Beret patrol base to the compound, a third of a mile away. The Taliban pulled back, but a short distance away they were dug in with machine guns.

"There was enemy located in three different positions in this irrigation ditch," Ford remembers.

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[reply60min]

See pbs''s "EXTREME OIL" for another recently completed Baku-Ceyhan-Tablisi-Mediterranean Sea pipeline that "liberated" caspian oil.


from the bbc:
"The construction of the 850-kilometre pipeline had been previously discussed between Afghanistan''s former Taliban regime, US oil company Unocal and Bridas of Argentina.

The project was abandoned after the US launched missile attacks on Afghanistan in 1999.
Afghanistan plans to build a road linking Turkmenistan with Pakistan parallel to the pipeline, to supply nearby villages with gas, and also to pump Afghan gas for export, Mr Razim said.
The pipeline is expected to be built with funds from donor countries for the reconstruction of Afghanistan as well as ADB loans, he said."

[reply60min]

Everyone (military and civilian) has the right and duty to investigate and question. The information is there for anyone who wants to seek it out. As we know "I was just following orders" did not hold in war trials. Just because one country''s leadership "legalized" an action (waterboarding torture), that too did not hold in Nazi or Japanese world war criminal trials.

Every family will "support the troops" with their $21,000 of the 3T bill as it is silently taken from their back pockets. Try to get that type of subsidy for alternative energy expansion and energy independence! It''s just like the crooks of enron, dynergy, el paso etc. who decimate pension funds or saddle rate payers with 30 years to pay off the exorbitant electricity rates for the shortages they schemed. The west as "nation builders" assures they will get the same types of crooks as the medical drug industry that deny the free market principles and force U.S. buyers to pay more than Canadians.

So remember, every country deserves an Independence Day. And as having done nothing since the ''70''s it remains: America is addicted to oil. And, addicts commit crimes to feed their habits.

[reply60min]

Now the administration had the oil lawyers draft a 400 page PSA agreement giving them 50% of the oil they extract. Washington pressures them at every opportunity, while the Iraqi oil workers say "just be sell us the equipment". The administration wants the old days of aramco where ignorant saudis just sat back and cashed a royalty check and outsiders ran the whole operation. It doesn''t do much for the foundation of the country, especially when it peters out in 40 years. The old "give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" applies directly to rebuilding of iraq. Theft, greed, jealously, coveting another''s property etc, all find the claim "hijacked religion" reflexively appropriate to the "christians" in office.

So with 81% of americans saying the country is on the wrong course, the world consensus the west is wrong, a low 30% house/senate approval, 28% presidential approval etc, the question is how did this occur? Could another super power claim to be doing a similar "good" (say, to protect the world''s poor from global flooding, or to fix the corporate control over a decades old failed health system) and invade and displace the leadership and then likewise claim of an expensive occupation that "they have resources we can sell off to fund it"?

[reply60min]

The book "100 YEARS OF OVERTHROW" shows how the democratically elected mossadegh, hamas, arbenz, allende etc, were decimated for resource control and conquest. The bad governments of saudi arabia or egypt are ignored as long as they play the west''s game with oil or regional control. Those that seek more for their people (mossadegh 16-50% royalty, chavez etc) are targeted oddly as if having giving too much "interest" in their citizens.


"THE GRAND CHESSBOARD", irretractably written before the invasions, speaks of of these countries that make the headlines today - iraq, afganistan, turkmenistan, ukraine, georgia, iran, syria, jordan, pakistan, israel, india, etc. Just color in the squares and recognize where the U.S.''s 700 foreign bases are, and recognize just who became the disposable pawns in iraq and afganistan. Realize that we still occupy a part of cuba and embargo them for the equivalent for what is going on today with Poland and Czechoslovakia. The U.S.''s 5% uses 25% of the world''s resources and 45% of the world''s gasoline while other countries demand their share. How far we have strayed. Imagine if the biblical story of 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish miraculously could feed 5000 but instead 45% were kept for few disciples. Days before bremmer left he tried to sneak in the laws that absolves the west from war prosecution, a mandate that "minerals" become privatized and allows all companies to take all profits out of iraq. Iraqis objected.

[reply60min]

The Taliban did not attack America. The "mujihadeen/AQ", nurtured by the U.S. to "kick out foreign armies" did. Rumsfeld threatened to remove the taliban from power after their rebuff of the Unocal/Rumsfeld Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Indian Ocean Pipeline from the oil rich caspian sea region. That, explains the a lot about how this administration treats pakistan and occupies afganistan in their 6 year "hunt". This love-hate relationship is required for the pipeline to materialize. Evidence appeared last year as the first agenda in afganistan was to build the main N-S road and bridge.
The same oil agenda was exposed in iraq, where the opening invasion sent special forces to guard the in-operative trans-jordan pipeline while the museums were looted. Recall, how the administration even floated the idea of "laying a pipeline as they advanced north to resupply the troops". of course that would have later made a dandy drainage source to export oil for some multinational oil company. A similar thing occurred before, as taxpayer funded project turned privatized windfall bonanza - the "big inch, little inch" pipelines (likewise, and the texas rangers stadium).

Regarding AQ and "no distinction between them and those that harbor them", the U.S. does the same with terrorist killer Posada. "bringing democracy" is just an excuse for the public and the unquestioning military.

[libsrweak]

Unfortunately times are a lot worse now than they were during nam.

Posted by ranger1948 at 10:11 PM : Apr 22, 2008
+ report abuse

*****
now they are fighting a more vicious enemy and a more vicious group of liberals..

[hbevis]

To warftr

Are you in the United States or some other country??

You wrote a pretty moving piece. And it would seem to me that anyone with much sense would want all war''s to end.

[warftr]

Ms. Logan,

Thanks for your report. I found myself weeping uncontrollably throughout the story. There are no words for one that lays his life down before his brothers, without hesitation. That%u2019s why we serve. My civilian friends ask me why I don%u2019t separate from the military and find other work, this after three different trips to IRAQ and one to AFGN. I serve not for me, but for my brothers and sisters in arms.

I want the wars to end, and the killing to cease. But I will inflict my will as I am ordered to. After seeing much of the world through iron sites at the end of a weapon, I know that being different isn%u2019t necessarily wrong.

I completely lost it when I saw the son standing proudly in his place for his father that had been fatally wounded. I see my own son standing there and I pray to God that he spares my life for my children%u2019s sake. But I will not hesitate, not for a minute, to put myself in danger or sacrifice my life so that I won%u2019t have to see someone else%u2019s child standing in their place.

This thought process might seem foreign to you and your viewers, but it%u2019s a way of life for some. I don%u2019t see myself doing anything else, and I don%u2019t much want to either.

Again, thank you for your report.

[ranger1948]

jc1844
Unfortunately times are a lot worse now than they were during nam.

[jc1844]

What a degressing mess we''re in. Correuption in the "Billions"...Missmanagement from the top down....No End In Sight....Thousands of deaths(ours & civilians)......A *** of a President lacking any sense of leadership....Reminds me of NAM yrs ago. My how history repeats itself.